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EU whistleblower allowed to make her case

Whistleblowing accountant, Marta Andreasen, looks as if she will get to publicly state her concerns about EU accounting systems after a decision was taken to allow her to make her case in writing to the European Parliament's budgetary committee.

The final hearing by the committee is likely to be in public with Commission vice president Loyola de Palacio expected to be present.

Marta Andreasen told Accountancy Age that now she hopes to recover her reputation and be placed back in her job. She would then like to work on improvements to the accounting system that copes with the Euro 98bn (£61bn) annual budget of the EU.

The Commission suspended Marta Andreasen, its accounting officer, from her job after she refused to sign off the accounts for 2001. That was within months of joining the staff of the Commission at the beginning of this year.

Andreasen claimed she could not sign off the accounts based on concerns about alleged shortcomings within the Commission’s accounting system.

She was then suspended. She was also subjected to disciplinary proceedings, in a move led by Neil Kinnock, commissioner for reform, for breaching staff rules, and publicly speaking out.

It had previously looked as if the disciplinary move might have prevented Andreasen from expressing her views, on the grounds of a regulation that a Commission official cannot speak to another European institution if under disciplinary procedure.